Abstract
Livestock can be managed to help heal riparian areas
and rangelands damaged by excessive use from
livestock, wildlife, recreation, mining, natural
elements such as drought or flood, or weed and pest
infestations. Livestock activity can also be used to
enhance the productivity of naturally less-productive
rangelands for the benefit of both wildlife and
livestock.

Properly-managed grazing on riparian areas can
facilitate re-establishment ofstreamside vegetation,
while inhibiting noxious weeds or undesirable
woody species that discourage use by wildlife and/or
recreationists. Time-intensive rangeland grazing can
help break up matted sods and reduce undesirable
vegetation types, allowing more productive forage
species to revegetate. Hoof action breaks up capped
soils to create water-permeable seed beds, so native
grasses can flourish and out-compete undesirable or
less-productive vegetation. Livestock grazing is also
important in maintaining open mountain meadows
for elk and/or deer critical habitat by preventing or
impeding encroachment of woody species.

The improvement and preservation of
riparian/rangeland health and biodiversity through
proper livestock management on public and private
lands is not a new concept to the western livestock
industry. Many of these livestock management
techniques have been researched and reported in
agricultural and natural resources journals during the
last 20 years. In the past, however, such strategies
were rarely implemented on public lands because of
widespread public misunderstanding and
misperceptions about livestock grazing, and
increased pressure from anti-livestock groups to
curtail livestock grazing altogether.

Wyoming's Coordinated Resource Management
(WyCRM) process has been an effective agent for
disseminating understanding and use of livestock
grazing management strategies to producers and the
public. WyCRM teams are collaborative problem-solving,
stakeholder / consensus groups comprised of
federal and state land management personnel,
agricultural producers, recreationists, planners, and
other environmentally concerned citizens. Social
change occurs as participants become more
knowledgeable of total resource relationships and
interactions, voluntarily amending their initial
viewpoints. The result is often a comprehensive
resource management plan for an area, based on
multiple use and ecosystem management goals,
rather than on the goals for a single resource or
interest group. WyCRM teams provide the relief of
shared responsibility for decision-making and risk,
as well as group support for trying innovative
strategies and techniques such as using livestock to
heal or enhance the environment for wildlife,
recreation, and livestock.

Accompanying photographs show damaged and
healthy resources, including trend photos (before and
after) of a riparian zone healed with livestock
grazing; rare plant species preserved by livestock
grazing; domestic goats controlling leafy spurge at
Devil's Tower National Monument; and wildlife
habitat enhanced by livestock grazing. Thought-provoking
quotes from WyCRM team members
highlight the text.